Tweets Will Be Downloadable By the End of The Year

Have you ever tweeted something really funny or clever, and wished you could store it somewhere so it wouldn’t be lost in some content-killing Twitter meltdown? Well, even if you haven’t, there are a quite a few Twitter-philes who have been asking for the ability to download a record of their tweets without taking the time to copy and paste everything they’ve ever said. (Admittedly, that could take a while.)

At long last, it looks like these Twitter historians have gotten their wish: Speaking at an Online News Association conference, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo said that users would have the ability to download their tweets by the end of this year.

Costolo first revealed that “tweet curation” was on the way during an interview with The New York Times[1] back in July. Since then, the company has kept mum about plans for rolling out the feature — until now.

Twitter has been getting some heat over some of the company’s new restrictions on their service, including a new rule limiting the use of third-party Twitter clients and our personal gripe, the removal of GIF avatars[2]. Costolo defended the company’s actions, but also mentioned big plans to add new features that will dramatically change the Twitter experience, hopefully for the better. Costolo teased access to real-time data and third-party apps, citing them as “things we’d like to do”, according to Reuters[3].

The ability to hold onto your most clever online moments sounds nice, but does anyone really want Twitter to get bigger? I thought “less is more” was reason people started using Twitter in the first place.